Equity = Excellence Conference

Keynote Speakers

Professor James A. Banksis Kerry and Linda Killinger
Professor of Diversity Studies and Director of the Center for Multicultural
Education at the University of Washington, Seattle. He is a past president of
the American Educational Research Association (AERA) and the National Council
for the Social Studies (NCSS). He was a Spencer Fellow at the Center for
Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford during the 2005-2006
academic year. He is a member of the National Academy of Education. Professor
Banks is a specialist in multicultural education and in social studies
education and has written many articles, chapters, and books in these fields.
His books include Teaching Strategies for
Ethnic Studies, Cultural Diversity and Education: Foundations, Curriculum and
Teaching, Diversity and Citizenship Education: Global Perspectives, and Race, Culture, and Education: The Selected
Works of James A. Banks. Professor Banks is the editor of the Handbook of Research on Multicultural
Education (Jossey-Bass) and the "Multicultural Education Series"
of books published by Teachers College Press, Columbia University. Professor
Banks holds honorary doctorates from five colleges and universities and The
UCLA Medal from the University of California, Los Angeles, the University's
highest honor. In 2005, Professor delivered the 29th Annual Faculty Lecture at
the University of Washington, the highest honor given to a professor at the
University.In Fall 2007, he was the
Tisch Distinguished Visiting Professor at Teachers College, Columbia
University.

Elizabeth “Betita”
Martinez has been a social justice
activist and organizer for over 50 years. She has published six books and
countless articles on social justice movements in the Americas. Best known is
her acclaimed bilingual volume 500 Years
of Chicano History in Pictures, which became the basis for a video she
co-directed. Her other books include De
Colores Means All of Us: Latina Views for a Multi-Colored Century (South
End Press), Letters from Mississippi
(re-issued in 2002), and The Youngest
Revoluton: A Personal Report on Cuba. Her most recent work is 500 Years of Chicana Women’s History
(2008, Rutgers University Press)After
graduating from Swarthmore College, which awarded her an honorary doctorate in
2000, Martinez worked as a United Nations researcher on colonialism in Africa,
an editor at Simon & Schuster; and Books and Art Editor of The Nation.
During the 1960s she was one of two Chicanas who served fulltime in the Black
civil rights movement with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
(SNCC). In 1968 she joined the Chicano movement in New Mexico, where she edited
the newspaper El Grito del Norte and co-founded the Chicano Communications
Center, a barrio-based organization.Since moving to the Bay Area in 1976, she has taught Ethnic Studies and
Women’s Studies in the California State University system, conducted
anti-racist training workshops, and worked on Latino community issues. She ran
for Governor of California on the Peace and Freedom Party ticket in 1982. She
has spoken to hundreds of academic, student and community groups and received
many awards. In 1997 she co-founded and currently directs the Institute for
MultiRacial Justice in San Francisco, a resource center that aims to help build
alliances between peoples of color and combat divisions. In 2001 she attended
the U.N. World Conference Against Racism in South Africa as a delegate from the
Women of Color Resource Center in Oakland, California. She is one of 1000
women from 150 countries nominated for the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize.

Ronald Takaki. an internationally recognized
scholar, has been a professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of
California, Berkeley, for over 30 years. He provided the conceptual framework
for the B.A. program and the Ph.D. program in Comparative Ethnic Studies as
well as for the university's multicultural requirement for graduation. Takaki's
11 books include significant titles. Iron
Cages: Race and Culture in 19th Century America (Knopf, 1979) has been
critically acclaimed. Strangers from a
Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans (Little, Brown, 1989) was
selected by the San Francisco Chronicle as one of the best 100 non-fiction
books of the 20th century. A Different
Mirror: A History of Multicultural America (Little, Brown, 1993) was chosen
for an American Book Award and was hailed by Publishers Weekly as a
"brilliant revisionist history of America that is likely to become a
classic of multicultural studies."A passionate advocate for multiculturalism, Takaki debated Arthur
Schlesinger, Jr. at the opening plenary session of the 1997 conference on
American Diversity and American Foreign Policy. Takaki also debated Nathan
Glazer four times, beginning in 1980, and changed his thinking as announced in We Are All Multiculturalists Now. In
1997, Takaki participated with President Bill Clinton to help brainstorm ideas
for his major speech, "One America in the 21st Century: The President's
Initiative on Race." The Los Angele s Times has described Takaki as
"a minority Everyman. He is a rare hybrid, a multicultural scholar."